


A Journey Dreams are Made Of

by Anonymous



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Batfam Drama, Damian is an Asshole, F/M, Gen, Just the way I like them tho, paranoid Bruce
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 11:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15929660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: What if you could travel into the universe you love? Play around with the characters, interact with them on a first-hand basis, and ultimately, flesh out their real natures, not the larger-than-life caricatures, but the people inside them.  This fic is a blatant me-service, as I'm not really sure other people are into this concept, but I'm really hoping to find people who share my interest!Set in Earth One, a traveler from Earth Prime enters a world that she knows nothing - and everything - about.





	A Journey Dreams are Made Of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FabulaRasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/gifts), [Amanuensis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amanuensis/gifts), [susiecarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/gifts), [Unpretty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpretty/gifts), [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



It was a misty gray dawn, the sky overhead painted with wisps of clouds, in that strange shade of gray you just can’t trust because its too shifty, too changeable. The sun had not yet risen, but Gotham was already bustling. The smog was rising as it enveloped everything like a sticky blanket, everyone drawing their shawls around themselves almost as if trying to prevent the city from contaminating them. But they knew it was a lost fight. Gotham had a way of creeping up your insides and seeping into your lungs, into the very air you breathed, until you felt thoroughly, utterly, tired and just gave up the fight and let the city claim you.

It was a chirpy morning outside Wayne Manor. The house stood dark and forbidding, but almost everything else was encouraging and bright. The terrapins splashed in the garden pool with abandon, the dogs barked and far away, in the distance, if you listened carefully enough, a cow mooed. The grass was green and freshly watered, and slippery.

There was a knock on the front door. The great handle rose and fell three precise times, each time regulated by half a second in between.  
A shabby parcel of a person stood on the front step. A slow trickle of blood dripped downwards from underneath it’s rags onto the heavy stone stoop, but the parcel - the person - did not seem to care. Indeed, it - she - merely looked down at the trickle with mild interest, and wiped at it with her trudge boots.  
The doors hummed open suspiciously easily, one would have expected this kind of door to creak. A face popped out of the door at about the level of the tramp’s waist, and looked up with barely concealed irritation.  
“Go away.”  
“Now, now, I would not have expected such uncharitable behaviour from a Wayne.”  
“You pretend to be a beggar, but you are not poor. You dress like a tramp, but your face looks freshly washed, indicating you not only have a home, but access to reasonable hygiene. Your clothes are torn out of intent, not use, else the edges would not be straight, but ragged. You’ve ripped them on purpose. This indicates you’re a fraud.”  
In the face of this torrent of deductive reasoning, the tramp looked suitably impressed. She did not, however, turn back. “Nice work, detective.”  
The face showed no change in expression, however the tramp thought she detected a slight tightening of the muscles around the mouth.  
“Don’t call me that.”  
“Yes, I know. That’s your father’s title.”  
The visage of the young boy turned noticeably. His face flushed, his eyebrows shot together, and his mouth deepened into a scowl. He also, incidentally, pulled out a dagger from the silk folds of his morning gown.  
If the tramp was in any way surprised by this turn of events, she did not show it.  
“Enter,” he hissed. It sounded more like a challenge than an invitation.  
“No.”  
The boy now inclined his head, surprised.  
“Not until I know if your father is inside,” she said.  
He huffed a breath. “Are you afraid?”  
She smiled, for the first time, showing a long row of crooked, uneven and completely false teeth. “No. I’m terrified.”  
“Of me?”  
“Of death. You’re but the parcel it would come wrapped in.”  
Now the boy smiled.  
“It would seem we are at an impasse. I would not have taken you for a coward.”  
“We come in all shapes and sizes.”  
“So you do. Wait here, I shall fetch him,” he said with a certain relish.  
The great door clanked shut, but not before the tramp had slipped inside. Instantly the dagger was at her throat.  
“Hush, little Dami,” she cooed. “You really wanna be more respectful to me, you know.”  
The boy’s green eyes darkened dangerously, and he slid the blade across her trembling pale neck in a deadly imitation.  
“How do you know my name?” he asked, and his hand was trembling with eagerness.  
“The same way I know your father’s.”  
This explanation was not a very soothing one to the young assassin. He proceeded to choke hold her, and sweep her at her knees, then kneel over her with his elbow pressed down at her ribcage.  
“Damian!”  
Instantly, the young assassin was on his feet, and the choking, wheezing tramp was finding her way unsteadily to her knees. A six-foot tall, dark haired ghost had floated in out of nowhere, and was staring down at the two of them.  
“Who is this?”  
Before the boy had a chance to answer, the tramp found her unsteady way to her feet and choked out, “Ughh…a g-guest...your hospitality…immensely a-appreciated.”  
Now the ghost wandered closer. On inspection, it seemed to be nothing more harmless that a tall, deadly pale man, who pallor made him look dangerously close to that excellent habit the undead resort to, of sucking nourishment from the living.  
“I see.”  
The man spoke with a strange rusty creak, the sort she would have expected from the door.  
She looked at the boy quizzically.  
“Father has lost his voice,” he clarified. “But you will lose more than just your ability to speak if--”  
“Forgive my son, he is a little…new to the concept of a guest,” the man interrupted, as he came closer. “This way,” he said, leading her from the dark and foreboding foyer to the less dark but somehow more foreboding…parlor? She wasn’t sure what the name for the room was, but she was sure that it could have comfortably housed her entire family.  
“You seem to have an injury that needs tending to. Also, some nourishment would not be completely unwelcome, would it?” he asked, smiling. It was a smile of a thousand watts, dazzling, all heart but no soul.  
She shivered, but nodded. “Thank you.”  
“But--” Damian interrupted.  
“Now, now, Damian. That is not how we treat guests, is it?”  
There was a dark glint in the man’s eyes, and the boy clearly saw something written in them, because he turned away, appeased.  
As soon as the boy was gone, the man turned to her, but it was like a mask had fallen off. There was something raw and ugly in the pressed line of his lips. He advanced his hand, and the tramp withdrew, but it turned out it was extended with no more malicious intent than to shake her hand.  
“I’m Bruce.”  
“Yes.” She answered.  
“Yes?”  
“I know.”  
He smiled politely. The smile did not reach his eyes.  
“And who are you?”  
She had still not shaken his hand, and he still hadn’t withdrawn it.  
“I’m…afraid.”  
He raised an eyebrow. “Afraid of what?”  
“Surely it does not take a detective to deduce by now.”  
“You still haven’t answered my previous question. Who are you?”  
The girl shivered, again. It had nothing to do with the cold. She was sure he noted it each time, and probably wrote it off somewhere in some special mental diary. “I need to sit.”  
“Please.”  
The couch was luxuriously soft, and she sank into it like it was a pile of butter. Rich upholstery, opulent furnishings. Nothing unexpected.  
The man continued standing. His face was blank. The girl tried to remember when she had seen a face naturally look as blank before, the answer was: never. Faces, as a rule, are not blank, not unless they have been purposefully wiped clean. The eyes were a deep-set sapphire, giving nothing away, as hard and flinty as a rock ledge, and about as merciful.  
“You threatened my son.”  
These words were a growl, but not that of a cornered predator. It was the growl of a creature about to pounce.  
“Yes.”  
“You are immensely, astronomically idiotic.”  
“No.”  
“Am I only to going receive answers in monosyllables?  
“You are a hero.”  
Those four words had the desired effect: the man’s shoulders bunched up into knots, and his hands began to curve inward. .  
Good she thought. He’s exhibiting tension. He isn’t in as much control as he thinks. She had gravely underestimated the impact of her words, and his loss of control. As she opened her mouth, her torso was pummeled backwards and the air pushed out of her lungs - a second time. Except this time, she wasn’t sure there was going to be any rescue, and this wasn’t just a kid. It was a giant mountain of a man, and, as he struck her, she felt like she was being pounded by a wall.  
She sputtered and coughed, and rocked backward on her heels. “I…wasn’t expecting that.”  
“You’ve got more guts than you think.”  
He was looming over her, and as she looked up she saw him raise his hands. She wasn’t sure she could take it a second time. Two of her ribs felt untrustworthy, and the back of her head was bleeding. Idly she wondered if she had a concussion, and if it would cause noticeable brain damage.  
“Time out.”  
He knelt, and lifted her chin delicately, and looked her directly in the eyes. “Just to satisfy my curiosity, who exactly gave you the genius idea of blackmailing the Batman?”  
“Jesus. Listen to yourself. If I was blackmailing you, you really think I couldn’t do it from a safer distance?”  
“Not everyone in this city has an IQ above 80.”  
“Yes, yes. You’re a genius, and the rest of us scrounge and make do with what little intellect remains to us.”  
“I only wish. But you wanted me to think you were blackmailing me. Why?” he asked, looking at her cuffs. She wondered what he was reading there.  
“I wanted you to think I am dangerous. I then wanted you to know that I am.”  
His mouth curled with faint amusement. “You look like the very definition of danger.”  
“I made you lose control, didn’t I? You had no idea what you were doing for that brief moment, admit it.”  
He didn’t admit it. She didn’t expect him to. His face looked by turns amused, then deliberative, then curious.  
“You thought it would be a fun way to spend your afternoon playing mind games with me?”  
“Aw, come on, you don’t give yourself enough credit,” she muttered, rubbing her head. “Alfred will be here any minute. I know he’s at the farmer’s market buying coconuts and fresh goat cheese. Then, he will be making a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts, which should take about four minutes…queue included and all. I say he should be home right about…”  
The front door opened, and Alfred walked in, his arms piled with groceries and - yes - donuts. He walked straight from the foyer into the hall, adjoining the dining room and delicately unloaded his paper bags. The tramp chose this fortuitous moment to voice a most exquisitely tortured and strangled groan, and fell to the floor clutching at her former wound, which was now bleeding afresh and pouring blood into the Persian carpet. Bruce looked equal measures horrified and angry; he could see that it would not be very easy to explain to Alfred what a homeless girl was doing bleeding out in the middle of the carpet, and why it looked like he had been punching the hell out of her. Also, for that matter, why she was unconscious. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the concussion in the back of her head and the corresponding blood stain on the wall.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first batfic, so let me know how I did in the comments, as well as any OOC you may have noticed. I'm going to try to post a new chapter every week, so I hope you stay tuned. Thanks a bunch!


End file.
